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Users of Arch (or other "advanced" distros) don't really require hand-holding. Chances are, someone within the community will add Arch-specific packages to AUR or write a guide to make it work.

Except for when they can't get it to work. Because really, 99% of "advanced Linux users" aren't nearly all that advanced. In either case, when they can't get it to work, this costs the company money, in two ways.

First, the wanna-be elitist users just go around bad-mouthing the company's "crappy" products and poor "Linux" support, which costs the company sales from other potential customers.

Second, the company has to process refunds, which has overhead. Overall, an unhappy customer costs more than no customer, which is why successful companies try so very hard to both make their customers happy and target advertising and sales only to demographics that they know they can keep happy. And in the world of software, that often means only targeting one major OS.

Originally Posted by Bomyne

I mean,I have no problem paying for software and games. They put a lot of work into it. They deserve to make money on it if they desire.

I'm sure that you are a good person. I know I am. Our personal behavior unfortunately doesn't mean anything regarding larger trends.

Linux user have both an image problem and some actual, real evidence working against them. The image problem stems from the fact that they're using a free OS instead of just up and paying for another OS. If the user is so against paying the "Microsoft tax" to get an OS that already runs a game company's products, it stands to reason that the user might be against paying the "fun tax" to get a legal copy of the company's product. That is just an image problem; I know of no proof that's true. But it's a common sentiment, both in the games industry and the larger software industry as a whole.

The actual evidence stems from stats back in the Loki days. The one that actually did Loki in was the Quake 3 boxed copy sales. They made a mere 50,000 boxed copies of Quake 3, in the collector's edition tins, which they planned to sell out and then release regular boxed copies. They sold well under 50% of that stock. Stats of players online showed a couple hundred thousand people playing on Linux.

Now, Windows games have a ridiculously high piracy rate too (which is why bitching about DRM is a dead-end; DRM is a symptom of the problem that most people are selfish little fucktards, not the problem itself). However, when you both have a huge piracy rate and can't even sell a pathetic 50,000 copies of a product, your target market (Linux) is pretty much entirely dead. Sure, these days Linux users would likely easily buy 50,000 copies, since Linux has more users today than it did 10 years ago. Whether that increase is users has been offset with an increase in _ethical_ users is as yet unknown. The only real data we have to go on, despite being very old, is not very flattering to Linux.

Originally Posted by varikonniemi

Yeah, i wonder. In HIB Linux users always pay clearly the most, so this myth should be put to rest already.

Linux users have paid the most individually... of those who paid. You'd have to show stats of how many Linux users just pirated the games. (And yes, piracy amongst HiB is ridiculously high, especially given how cheap you can get them. It's freaking pathetic.)

You have to be careful interpreting the HiB stats without further data anyway. At face value, they would also indicate that 25% of all gamers are Linux users, which even the single most fanatical Linux believer would admit is completely untrue. There's more going into those numbers, and that makes them suspect when trying to evaluate whether a real AAA game is going to see the same kind of sales turnout from Linux users.

The total sales of all the Humble Bundles combined, on all platforms, still falls a whole order of magnitude short of the budget of just Call of Duty 2, and a whole two orders of magnitude below the profits on CoD 2. If you're a sales analyst, that's going to stand out a hell of a lot more than the average Linux sale price on the HiB.

Originally Posted by Dukenukemx

#3 There needs to be a better way to manage these repositories. I know that Ubuntu has a way to manage them but there has to be a better way. Like putting hotlinks in websites that you can click on and have it added to your system. Cause right now I keep bookmarks for repositories I want. I also ran an update and accidentally got Wine 1.5.20, which doesn't play World of Warcraft anymore. So I gotta downgrade to 1.5.19, which is not a straight forward process.

Most distros are outright hostile to that idea. Get your software from their central repository or go away. That's their feelings on the subject.

They have identified a legitimate problem -- dumb users download random crap off the Internet, install it, and then blame the OS when their whole computer stops functioning properly -- but have completely missed the target on the proper solution.

Originally Posted by Gps4l

I am used to games sometimes crashing, in all the years of gaming, I never had a game that never crashed.

... what games exactly have you been playing? The _Vast_ majority of games I've played have never once crashed on me.

Obviously, anything from Bethesda is not on that crash-free list.

Also keep in mind that many, many game crashes are actually video driver bugs. Video drivers are both the most complex and more fragile software running on your computer besides the kernel itself. There's a reason Windows moved to a micro-kernel design just for WDDM; they got sick of having their OS called crashy and fragile just because AMD/NVIDIA/Intel couldn't deliver a stable driver.

Originally Posted by zerothis

I _hand_ write_ "GNU/Linux" on all my paper money to let developers know we actually pay for things. When I converse with developers about Linux, one of the things I ask them is if they've seen this written on their money. So far, 2 (of hundreds) have said yes. Lets keep it up until they all answer yes.

... aside from that being totally illegal in most countries (defacing legal tender), and paper money also being extremely rarely used to buy software anymore, having defaced cash doesn't actually mean anything. I've received dollar bills in change from stores with all kinds of weird crap written on them. Much of that weird crap clearly was not targeted at the store (or me), but was originally written for some other hapless individual who then spent the money, circulating meaningless nonsense into the system.

Even more importantly, anywhere other than little one-man shops, the developers are not ever going to see any actual paper money from customers. Developers (and artists, and advertising folks, and executives, and producers, and so on) get paid via check or direct deposit from their company's payroll departments. The sales agents are the only ones likely to see any actual cash, and then only in the increasingly rare case that payments aren't collected and processed by an outside firm.

Having recently been addicted to getting Linux working as a replacement for windows, I think it's very close, if not there as a replacement to Windows. As I'm rather new to Linux I can give some advice for what I think needs work.

Even my TV capture card is a pain to get going. Does a Hauppauge HVR 1800 work or not on Linux? Most websites say no, but I've read posts from developers that say that 3.5 or 3.6 kernel has it working. Took and a chance and ordered it. There needs to be better communication on this.

#2 The user interface. I have to give props to XBMC cause they know how to make an elegant UI. MythTV in comparison looks dated. Also for some reason Cinnamon is never mentioned or benchmarked here. It's by far the most complete UI for Linux. It's not a very pretty UI, as I think Unity looks more modern, but it actually works the best.

#3 There needs to be a better way to manage these repositories. I know that Ubuntu has a way to manage them but there has to be a better way. Like putting hotlinks in websites that you can click on and have it added to your system. Cause right now I keep bookmarks for repositories I want. I also ran an update and accidentally got Wine 1.5.20, which doesn't play World of Warcraft anymore. So I gotta downgrade to 1.5.19, which is not a straight forward process.

I'm also in the same boat (trying to get Linux working as a total Windows replacement). I even put Ubuntu 12.10 (I wish I could have put on 12.04, but the 3.2 kernel didn't support Trinity APUs and I built them a home theater PC with one) and had some experiences with tv tuners from there.

First, here is where you find out if your tv tuner is supported. I think it is very clear what cards are supported on linuxtv, but you do have to know where to look, and myth and xbmc don't do a good job pointing to linuxtv (even though that is where all the drivers come from). I got a 1250 for my grandparents to use their Ubuntu box as a DVR, so I took some big risks trying to have an Ubuntu box running a grand new CPU (released in October) that ran two seperate X sessions (the tv and the desktop) with a usb bluetooth remote for the tv on top of the fglrx driver so my brother could play games in wine on it. It worked out better than expected.

@2: mythtv is a pain in the ass. It broke all the time trying to run it on that new PC, the setup utility would only work through an ssh pipe. On the same machine. I have no idea why. The interface would break a lot, it changes channels really slowly, it frequently bugs out and crashes, etc. Not very plesant. They don't watch tv directly through mythv frontend or XBMC (xbmc I fear would be overkill for them and scare them off, mythtv has a simpler interface, and with a nice theme it looks good even if it runs like crap) becuase channel switching is so slow. But they do record stuff on it and I got them understanding how to switch input modes on their tv, so that worked out.

One thing that pissed me off on that build was that using Unity, you couldn't use VNC. They bundle Vino with Ubuntu but out of the box with fglrx and Compiz it won't ever repaint the screen over VNC, and I still can't fix that bug and it is absolutely infuriating for someone who regularly wants to vnc over an ssh tunnel into that machine to fix problems they have or show them how to do stuff. It seems to be a conflict between it being a new APU, the proprietary driver, and compiz, because under Cinnamon with

@3: I don't think dpkg was well planned out at all. I don't think any modern package system is really well planned out in general. (I don't think it is acceptable for a distro to expect users to manually compile every program not in the officially graced repositories, Arch). The problem isn't that bad on Ubuntu though, it already supports ppa: syntax, it just needs to add those links into launchpad pages and expand the web addins for Firefox to resolving ppa: links to be repositories the same way you can click an apt: link and get a package. I don't know why Canonical hasn't implemented it yet.

Though downgrading Wine is really easy if you use playonlinux. I'll try applications in my stock wine and if it doesn't work I'll just do it the playonlinux way. The application is slow as hell (written in python) depends on an internet connection for install scripts (which are written in shell script... ugh). Do install WoW in playonlinux though, it keeps a seperate wine binary just to keep comparability. Also the odd major version numbers of wine are supposed to be development branches, even though 1.4x is never updated with backports so everyone has to use it anyway.

... what games exactly have you been playing? The _Vast_ majority of games I've played have never once crashed on me.

Obviously, anything from Bethesda is not on that crash-free list.

Also keep in mind that many, many game crashes are actually video driver bugs. Video drivers are both the most complex and more fragile software running on your computer besides the kernel itself. There's a reason Windows moved to a micro-kernel design just for WDDM; they got sick of having their OS called crashy and fragile just because AMD/NVIDIA/Intel couldn't deliver a stable driver.

I think a larger problem with Linux as a gaming platform is that since Xorg is user space and all, and behaves like it, games will take control of the display, mouse, keyboard, and sound card and you can't get back control. Then they crash, and the only way to "close" them, is to switch TTYs and kill them from command line, and 9/10 times that will also kill the x session or render it unusable. And for gamers that is outright unacceptable. There needs to be a way to escape applications that freeze up besides killing the entire graphics stack, and games on Linux can't be allowed to take hostage hardware exclusively like the sound card, mouse, or entire display whenever they feel like.

I think a larger problem with Linux as a gaming platform is that since Xorg is user space and all, and behaves like it, games will take control of the display, mouse, keyboard, and sound card and you can't get back control. Then they crash, and the only way to "close" them, is to switch TTYs and kill them from command line, and 9/10 times that will also kill the x session or render it unusable. And for gamers that is outright unacceptable. There needs to be a way to escape applications that freeze up besides killing the entire graphics stack, and games on Linux can't be allowed to take hostage hardware exclusively like the sound card, mouse, or entire display whenever they feel like.

I have seen that happening. Mostly with wine based software where fullscreen is being used.
In Windows when video driver crashes, driver will be reloaded and you can happily use your computer, your game probably dies but you dont need to log in again and other apps are still running. In linux if driver dies, everything dies, you can lose a lot of work.
Open Source drivers are way too unstable. Some desktop apps can crash drivers (or xserver) way too easily.

Quite true. Some things already work nicely but yes, there is room for improvements. But still, there would be the blobs which should do the job until the free drivers are mature enough. Can't tell about intel, though I am not sure if intel GPUs are really made for high end gaming.

- While Linux hardware support is now generally in good standing, there's still a variety of gaming peripherals that go without full Linux support

Sadly yes, but this is and was always a matter of HW manufactureres. Actually, we have that e.g. Logitech problem for sooo long now. But then folks like Roccat offer better solutions. If you are on Linux and buy new HW you check before you buy.
And - in the future HW vendors can't deny the existance of Linux any longer. Sooner or later the HAVE to care about good driver support. And good driver support means: It is in the kernel (or an adequate project like SANE, gphoto2 etc.). With a free as in freedom license.

Other random Linux hardware support "gotchas" like kernel/driver regressions unfortunately not being too uncommon, power consumption disparity
between releases and compared to Windows

Partially true, yes. That has to be ironed out. But then, as soon as I set profile to "low" on my radeon, the power consumption is now equivalent (or even 1 - 1.5 W better than W32). So I guess it works on most components, but there are always some "quirks requiring" implementations, and I guess the exist to a lot in notebooks.

Most open-source games are still disappointing in terms of their artwork

Yeah, but hey, they are for free so I won't blame them. There are really good things, and things that are fun even without great GPU melting grafix.
(But you might also call me old school.)

And now compare a game that is freedom with a game that is sold for 40-50 Euros/US-Dollars. These high priced games have lots of devs working at them at a paid job whole day. (And then they are often released in a dire state, full of bugs because the publisher wanted to get it on the market.)
So there is lack on both sides. Though some smaller price indie games seem to work quite well (HumbleIB anyone?).

there's still a stigma attached to Linux that its users want everything for free and aren't very motivated to pay for software or support.

LAWLOMG. Yeah, this is probably still around.
The thing is there are soooo many Windoze people definitely NOT being correctly licensed. If you would make a worldwide license audit... omg.
Anyway. I think there are some people who absolutely don't care and some who just actually lack the money and don't know about alternatives. Linux/BSD users are often quite aware about licenses.

I mean, sooner or later these enterprises HAVE to make a/the first step towards Linux. If they hide behind prejudice they'll never find out.
Also, a lot of users would like to switch to Linux if their favourite application was available there.

One very important point IS:

You enterprises are often TOO LATE.

Just one example: Nero burning rom.
a) it was a nice app
b) Linux users wanted something like it but it was Windows only.
...
time passed
...
c) Linux folks made up their own programs. E.g. the nice K3B.
d) Linux users got up the K3B train. It was and is a good ride.
...
e) Somehow Nero people suddenly came to terms and ported.
f) but now everybody was already seated with the free as in beer and free as in freedom alternative K3B. So what? No surprise sales weren't that good.

But this is not just limited to Linux/BSD world. From a necessity alternatives arise and if that offer is better...

This is valid for most applications that do a specific job. LibreOffice/Calligra vs. MSO, GIMP vs. Adobe PS, Inkscape vs. Corel, ...
GAMES might be different because they "always tell a different story" (okay that is not really true but you get the point?).

There's also an unmeasured portion of Linux desktop users that won't run any games/software if it employs Digital Rights Management.

Yes. Maybe the reason to use Linux for them IS also or mainly to live in freedom.
I mean, it is okay for me not to distribute my single user license. But every windows game I bought... the first way to go was gcw and crack that damn thing so I could play it without any media dongle or something. I love platforms like gog, Humble Bundle and so on.
Just buy it, install it, play it. No messing around with CDs, DVDs, being online (activation or all time), typing in keys and so on.

Just play and enjoy the license you just paid for. That is the way it should be. Okay, maybe read the game's manual before.

Why did I not buy games for such a long time?
Because they would need you to buy a new GPU all the time, they were the same stuff we had a thousand times before, they would impose digital restriction management on you, some would even install kind of rootkits or exchange the W32 CD/DVD stack, they were HORRIBLY buggy (Bethesda... Betha thesda... BETA TESTER anyone?) and then even overpriced.
And then these UGLY gaming-console ports. No saving, no keyboard/mouse handling, just disgusting. And not to mention that most of these games were Windows only (or consoles and windows) so yeah, another reason not to buy.
But DRM is one of my main points. I understand that some devs are concerned about unlicensed copies, yes, but DRM? I love to be without it.

But then Desura, gog and HIB emerged, and yes, there were some full price games actually worth it (Dragon Age Origins, Witcher series). Those came with no or minimal DRM but still sold well. How comes?

There's a shortage of highly-qualified Linux game developer veterans

THAT IS.
Most true.

Not only for games. It lack Linux expertise on all ends!
There are even some gaming design schools or something that hook up people to things like DirectX. MSDNAA and other things contribute to that problem.
Or hardware vendors of most various types. When I ask them and mention the L-word their eyes groooooooOOOOw so huge that I fear they'll pop. OMG, the L-Word. You're the first to mention it.
(Even when it would make sense. Like driving a machine 24/7 via RS232 (simple data exchanged) but this for a longer time, at a time where most Windows versions were still likely to crash after running for a longer period.)

Fragmentation and differences among Linux distributions continue to be a problem for studios bringing their software to "Linux."

Ah well. That is a bit of prejudice. We DO have a similar effect in Windows. And we DO have "fragmentation" in terms of hardware.
But as long as all stand on the same base (Kernel/driver stack, glibc, and stuff) it should be quite okay. I am here on Gentoo for years now and if that isn't something like a kind of generic but also individual distribution...
If one is really in doubt and has dependencies

a) inform the user about deps he/she has to fulfill (like Windows-speek: You need at least DirectX 9 and W XP SP2 or something)
b) or make a static build

There's already been major game studios that have supported Linux in the past but have -- at least temporarily -- left the scene

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

a) Some might have been actually before their time. That is sad and true.
b) Some ported games. Games that were recent and new 5 years ago. These very games were available for 3 Euros in the bargain bin by now and would probably already run in Wine (or on the dual boot). And then the porting people wanted 40 Euros for it. Wow. I mean, native port, yeah but... what did they expect? Me - as a student without money - spending 45 Euros for a game I have only average interest in (by game itself) but that I could obtain for 3 Euros on every corner of the street and install it either on a W32 or Wine?
When you port it should be close to the release date of the game.

This is like movies not being released worldwide at the same time but with 6 months delay. Of course people interested have already activated their sources (legal or not) and seen it (in the original version) because they didn't want to wait so long - or they were uncertain if it will ever be in their country.

c) id never had the possibility to count Linux sales. The never actually sold it. You bought the Windows version and downloaded the game binary separately.

Very playable frame rates, no crashes, no nothing. TF2 Works just perfectly.

Edit: Thinking about buying another Ivy Bridge box as a living room media center. Intel and Steam deliver so much!

Intel is doing a great job, but I doubt you can play games like Aliens vs Predator 3. ( Direct X11 )
If you are a serious gamer, you need a graphics card.
I am pretty sure there are benchmarks on this site proofing this.
From what I remember the shared memory is a bottle neck, for demanding games.